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10 Startups to Watch — SnapCap

In a region where startups often struggle to find financing, SnapCap wants to make it easier for small businesses to get loans.

Running out of an office on Lower King Street in downtown Charleston, SnapCap provides business loans up to $200,000 to existing businesses, usually within 48 hours.

A coffee shop in Cheyenne, Wyo., recently secured a $15,000 loan for inventory, an auto mechanic in Columbia got a $110,000 loan for equipment and a realtor in San Diego received $14,000 for cash flow.

“If a business owner that supplies electronics depletes their entire inventory prior to the holiday season ... they can quickly get a loan from us so they can continue to run their business,” SnapCap President Hunter Stunzi said.

Stunzi and Chris Mettler, SnapCap’s vice president of operations, co-founded SnapCap in 2012. The former bank employees and longtime friends became disenchanted with the time-consuming business loan process at banks.

“With the prevalence of new technologies that make it easy to access a company’s bank and credit statements, why aren’t banks picking up on this and doing it themselves? It’s because banks move slowly,” Stunzi said. “They will do it in 10 years. We are doing it now.”

SnapCap studies a company’s data, such as its credit score and bank statement for the previous three months, to make lending decisions “almost in real time,” Stunzi said.

The majority of the loans are for fewer than 12 months. The average loan made by the six-person tech company is $38,000. Loans are divided into daily payments that are debited automatically Monday through Friday from a merchant’s account. SnapCap does not disclose its rates.

“Money flow affects everything in our daily lives. ... Businesses and jobs die because of lack of access to cash,” Stunzi said. “We’re making the bet that businesses can benefit from the use of our loans. ... A business owner that needs the money, we don’t lend to. A business owner that can use the money, we lend to them.”